There's no doubt that, even with the upgrades, the present West Coast Mainline doesn't have the capacity to cope with projected, and desired, passenger numbers.

Several studies have been undertaken looking at the different options and following those the Labour government made the decision to back HS2. The Conservatives have also done so (believing that it will relieve the demand for a new runway at Heathrow), however there are still many people, not all of whom live in the path of HS2, who are not convinced by the methodology of the studies.

HS2 will go into Euston. And HS1 leaves from St Pancras. A short hop on a bus or Victoria/Northern Line tube will be necessary to get between the two.

I’ve not seen it proposed yet, but I can see them building a surface-level shuttle service between Euston and St Pancras, especially if the redevelopment of Euston station takes in some of the surrounding area.

There was a (very, very) long term plan floated that might involve a link going from Birmingham and joining up with HS1 at Ebbsfleet, bypassing London altogether, but at the moment none of the studies have suggested that there will be enough traffic to warrant it within the next fifty years.

There are also no plans to include the security/border controls that exist on the HS1 stations, meaning that the HS2 stations cannot be a departure point for a direct journey out of the UK.

But the major one is that people are living further and further away from where they work these days. Average commutes have more than doubled in the past decade. There are several reasons for that – largely the cost of living in cities, the desirability of the countryside (fresh air, green space, good schools - and the lack of immigrants), and also because travelling by train has got easier. This is the chicken/egg bit.

Road travel has been getting slower as the roads get more congested (and building roads just leads to more traffic, so that’s an outdated solution), and rail travel has been getting faster due to the massive state investment that has mitigated against the effects of privatisation. Better and longer trains, more frequent (peak time) services, more express services, improved signalling and tracks leading to less delays, etc etc, make the option of travelling by train more desirable.

The rising price of tickets has yet to really affect the numbers of passengers using the rail network, probably because the cost of car insurance and petrol has outstripped the above inflation ticket price increases. Whether that continues given that this government have said that they want to phase out the state subsidy to the rail industry is still unclear. I get the impression that it won’t.

I think the trend for increasing commutes is what worries me - it doesn't seem sustainable or desirable.
I'm generally pro infrastructure projects but I think increasing commuting capacity is a reactive and short-term approach. It should be a long-term strategy for government to reverse the concentration of work in cities.

Unfortunately it’s only a very narrow group of people who have been able to take advantage of this (largely executives or freelancers). In an ideal world, we’d all live within walking distance of where we work, or we’d work from home, but I can’t see that happening.

relocation of all businesses, evenly distributed across the nation together with the mandatory assigning of jobs to people by the government and forced re-settling of everyone around the country. Who could argue against that?

anything Pete Waterman says seriously since a few years ago when he was touting about this 14 year old singer he'd "discovered", and he went all creepy on GM:TV and started talking about how beautiful she was at uncomfortable length